Challenge the Devil
A relatively obscure and insignificant Italian gothic horror, Challenge the Devil may nonetheless attract viewers curious to see Christopher Lee as the titular Devil. Those viewers should beware: his dubbed part amounts to a few minutes of non-devilish screen time buried halfway into the film.
The plot sees a group of rampaging young adults wander into a castle where they encounter Lee made up with white hair and mustache to pass for an elderly man. He tells them he’s haunted by his dead wife and if the group can find her so he can give her a proper burial he’ll give them all the riches of the castle. Short on cash and thinking Lee mad, the group agrees and sets out to search the castle.
After a few minutes of wandering the halls, the group finds itself lost. We get innumerable scenes of them wandering through empty rooms or up endless winding staircases, interspersed with sequences where they’re tormented by under-produced special effects such as fake spider webs and a googly-eyed spider.
The big finale sees the group enter a room full of crystal walls, meant to be a maze. The performers mime horror and confusion as though lost while ignoring the clearly visible pedestals on the ground holding the glass panels. Production notes reveal first-time director Giuseppe Veggezzi intended to obscure them in subsequent reshoots but they never happened.
Why they never happened proves a story more interesting than the film itself. The film, then called Katarsis (Catharsis), was completed in 1963. Just as it was released, its production company, I Films della Mangusta, went bankrupt, limiting its release to a handful of markets.
Another production company, Eco Film, bought the film, renamed it Sfida al diavolo (Challenge the Devil) and reedited the film, cutting a bunch of footage—including a Bella Cortez striptease scene.1 The company then shot a new wrap-around sequence invoking gangsters that facilitates voice-over narration for the remaining footage.2
Lest you worry this is some great loss, fear not. Veggezzi had grand ambitions of a psychological horror fairy tale but lacked the budget, cast, and talent to execute them. The performers struggle to differentiate themselves. The sets are underfurnished and unimaginatively lit. As mentioned, the special effects are amateurish.
The film’s lone moment of inspiration comes early, as the group arrives at the castle and Veggezzi proffers a shot of the cars in the courtyard, their headlights like eyes looking toward the ramparts.
For his part, Lee reportedly worked one week, but based on the final product, I’d be shocked if it was more than two days. He never saw any dailies or even the finished film. The dubbing robs him of his signature baritone yet he still conveys more screen presence than the rest of the cast. That said, even Lee die-hards can safely skip this one, as his few minutes offer nothing memorable. After shooting this he moved on to another Italian gothic horror, Mario Bava’s The Whip and the Body, a superior effort all around.